Corvus Consulting

The proverbial They are often heard to say that a hallmark of good design is that it’s obvious.

It’s hard to argue that understanding what something does should not be as immediate and easy as possible. There are exceptions, such as in games where exploration and challenge happen in part by decrypting the utility and purpose of the unfamiliar.

Embracing that maxim, however, can lead us to dismiss the reasoning behind a design choice when the need itself isn’t immediately obvious. I learned just that by taking a close look at the recent update to the Apple Remote and its puzzling addition of a Play/Pause button.

I didn’t need this remote: there are 3 of the first-generation remotes bundled with MacBooks kicking around my place already. But knowing that Apple doesn’t add buttons willy-nilly, I did need to understand why that Play/Pause button had been added, so off went my $19 and into my hand a svelte new remote.

The previous model used the primary Select button to fill the Play/Pause role with minimalist perfection. The new model retains that functionality, so the distinct Play/Pause button seemed even more superfluous in use than it did at first sight. My obsessive little puzzle deepened.

Context, Context, Context

It wasn’t until I was actually using the remote in the context that the extra button was added for that I realized why it was there.

The problem it solves is that the media navigation applications that the remote works with (AppleTV and FrontRow, specifically) use some very deep-nesting of hierarchical menus and modes. The approach is a tradeoff to achieve a 10-foot UI paradigm that media centres currently rely on. If video is playing, moving back to other menus just stops the video. If audio is playing, however, a person can navigate throughout most of the system without stopping the music (or podcast, audiobook, etc).

I’d run into this many times with the previous remote, where I wanted to pause the audio but had wandered far and away from the Now Playing interface. That Now Playing space is the only one where the primary select button on the older remote would pause playback instead of selecting something, and getting back to Now Playing could easily be five or more clicks. With the new remote it’s just one, no matter where in the interface I happen to end up during playback.

The experience has me thinking that the best kind of design obviousness is the one that surfaces only when it’s needed. The functional semantics of a control need to be easily understood, but we should also be willing to place those controls where they’ll be needed, even if that need isn’t obvious at first blush.